Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The yard needs some work...

The lawn should really be mowed, I should be writing, and the kids need to be played with, but what is gnawing at me is that the algae has bloomed in the pond and if I ever want to combat these green-tinted microbes, then I need to get a pump in the pond to circulate that water.

This is how it looks right now. Now, most of that green in the water is just reflection from the verdant jungle (that I should be mowing), but some of it is buds of algae. And I can just hear those little baby fuzzies whispering about how they plan to take over in the next few warm days.

Ha!! not today!! Not on a day when Jen has an aversion to doing the work she should and has a desire to build something.

With Chuck's fine collection of plumbing parts, we collected up some odds and ends and I think I can make a pretty good fountain. I bought a pump. but other than that, these are some things we had around the house.

the two cans are pvc cleaner and pvc glue, a plumber's best friend. and that means today they will be my best friends, too. The black thing is a pretty spout that will make the water come out like a pretty ball of sprayed water. You can just barely make out that at the bottom of this spout, the base is 3/4" wide. Here is my first problem.

The opening to my circulating pump is 2" wide. I need to reduce down quite a lot (anyone who's worked with water or who knows a bit about physics might want to stay tuned, because this is a LONG way to reduce down water. Oh, you don't think this is very exciting? Let me now mention that the pump I got pumps 4000 gallons per hour.) If I'm lucky, this thing is going to be able to wet down passing airplanes.

The white plastic parts are odds and ends left over from bathroom remodels that I will use to reduce down the diameter of the pipe.

Now to glue. Problem Dos. I can't get the jar open. Here's Charlie helping.

and helping some more.

Finally, I got out some big wrenches and we got it open.

While the glue is drying, I realize that the pond sits beneath the generous branches of many trees. A weeping willow is my main concern. It drops lots of leaves each day and if these continually get sucked into my pump, then I am going to be writing a new post real quick about how I had to build my own pump.

I need to build a filter. I found a bucket and a coat hanger and some mesh. I sewed up a net type thing around the coat hanger. My hope is that this bucket will sit near the edge and every day, I can dump out the leaves and thus have a clean long-term working pump.

(notice how this bucket looks terrible? Over-eager Jennifer painted it and then submerged it in the pond to check the depth-- all the oil based paint didn't care much for my hastiness.)

I'm going to go plug it in and I'll see if I can tame down the spray.

Here's the finished project. I've edited out the pics of me wading into the water, falling into the water. (and looking AWEsome doing it).

The first couple tries, did indeed, disloged satellites from their orbit, so we apologize for any inconvenience caused to the multi millionaires reading this who happen to own satellites.

I had to add about 10 feet of hose to tame it all down, but now it's pleasant. Take that algae. And take that To Do List. I beat one of you and ignored the other completely.